Mercadona completes the opening of a mega-innovation center in the Fuente del Jarro Industrial Estate with an investment of 3.5 million euros. The distribution chain recreates part of a house in a 5,700-square-meter warehouse for its customers to test the products and recommend how to improve them. The innovation model is one of the main distinguishing characteristics of Mercadona. The Valencian chain follows a strategy of learning with customers who use its products, listening to their comments and innovating with them. At the same time that they involve the client in the innovation process, the firm works directly with its suppliers to introduce new products and improve existing ones.

Mercadona opened its first research center with customers in 2011 and the Fuente del Jarro center will be the fifteenth. Most of the fourteen centers are on floors attached to the stores and are much smaller in size than the one in the Paterna industrial estate. Mercadona is setting up its mega laboratory in the old Sedesa Textil warehouse, which occupies a 7,300 square meter plot and has 5,700 square meters of constructed area. The new center is located on Calle Ciudad de Sevilla number 17 and 18 in Fuente del Jarro.

Sources close to the project specified that it will recreate "part of a home in order to develop innovations within the product testing and improvement model." The Fuente del Jarro innovation center will be one of the largest in the chain and will have offices and meeting rooms.

Most of Mercadona's product improvement laboratories are specialized in a specific area such as perfumery, home cleaning, personal grooming, pet care or dairy desserts and ice cream. One of the last ones is in Ontinyent and it focuses on breakfast products. In the case of the new Fuente del Jarro megacenter, it will not be specialized in any specific department.

The Valencian company has extended this work model to Portugal, where it prepares its entry. Mercadona announced the project of its first Portuguese innovation center in Matosinhos (Grande Porto) earlier this year. The laboratory has an extension of more than 1,000 square meters and is located in one of the cities where Mercadona will debut in Portugal. The goal is to adapt its offer to the habits of Portuguese consumers. To do this, it will develop together with them products according to their tastes, it will detect their needs in the products that make up their shopping basket and, this way, it will be able to introduce improvements and launch innovations in the five businesses that include all the products marketed by the chain : food (fresh and dry), drinks, home cleaning, personal hygiene and pet care.

One of the main characteristics of the innovation centers such as the one in Fuente del Jarro is that the products are developed from customers backwards. "Capturing their needs, listening to their suggestions and observing their habits to develop innovative products with a guarantee of success, is the objective of the strategy that we develop in the centers," pointed out company sources. The firm then transfers to the manufacturers of the Hacendado, Deliplus, Compy or Bosque Verde brands the preferences of its clients to adapt the products.